When comparing Grunt vs Google Chrome, the Slant community recommends Google Chrome for most people. In the question“What are the best tools to develop a chrome extension?”Google Chrome is ranked 1st while Grunt is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Google Chrome is:

By logging into Chrome using a Google account it's possible to sync history, extensions, passwords, bookmarks and other settings between devices. This makes it great for anyone working with multiple devices as it allows experiencing consistent context when in the browser.

Pro

A GUI front-end via spock

Pro

Choice of using it as a config file or writing your own functions

You can use Grunt as a config file or JavaScript by writing your functions via Node Modules.

Pro

Grunt v1.0 alpha uses Orchestrator for maximum concurrency

Grunt version 1 alpha, aka grunt-next, the upcoming next major release of Grunt, uses Orchestrator to sequence and execute tasks and dependencies with maximum concurrency, potentially bringing it up to speed with Gulp in term of performance.

Pro

An API that makes writing and using of plugins extremely easy

The API is built in such a way that if you write a Grunt task that is useful for someone else out there or would be useful for future projects, it can be easily made into a grunt plugin and then shared using npm.

Pro

Shell commands inside Grunt

There is a Grunt plugin called grunt-exec which allows developers to execute shell commands inside their Grunt files. This is extremely easy if a developer is developing only in Node and constantly getting out of Node environment to run something like a git command can become frustrating.

Pro

Syncs between devices

By logging into Chrome using a Google account it's possible to sync history, extensions, passwords, bookmarks and other settings between devices. This makes it great for anyone working with multiple devices as it allows experiencing consistent context when in the browser.

Pro

Excellent HTML 5 feature support

As of February 2015, Chrome scores highest of all browsers for HTML5 compatibility.

Pro

Installs extensions without requiring a restart

Pro

Great built-in developer tools

Chrome comes with built-in developer tools, making testing and enhancing web pages simpler for those of us involved in working with such technologies. As well as being beneficial to developers, this also has some benefit to non-technical users; in that by making testing simpler for developers those developers are more likely to use Chrome for their tests, and can spend more time making improvements over investigating underlying causes of issues.

Pro

Good performance

According to TopTen Reviews, Chrome is currently one of the best performing browsers for initial (cold) startup, average startup, and navigation times. Works very well with the uBlock Origin adblocker.

Pro

Plenty of extensions

There are far more available on this browser than any other, and that may matter for some.

Pro

Automatically updates

Chrome updates in the background ensuring you're always on the latest version. This makes it much more likely that sites will work on your browser, since (almost) all Chrome users will be running exactly the same version.

Pro

Simple user interface

For example, the address bar is also the search bar. Google calls it Omnibox.

Pro

Backed and supported by Google

Whilst Chrome is based on the open source browser Chromium), Google reviews this code and build on top of it. This means it takes (and contributes to) a number of the benefits of the open source model whilst having the resources, support and investment of a major company.

Pro

Huge variety of extensions available

Pro

Multiple account login

You can have multiple Chromes with different accounts logged at the same time. And it is really easy to manage different accounts.

Pro

Customizable by user

Each of the managed users can have their own configuration (themes, extensions, ...)

Pro

Sandboxed Tabs

Every tab runs as their own process, so if one crashes or becomes unresponsive, the whole browser isn't affected.

Pro

Works great with many extensions

Unlike Firefox, Google Chrome can keep its fast performance regardless of how many extensions are installed. With more than 10 extensions Firefox gets slower and slower in a geometric progression rate. Google Chrome doesn't care how many extensions the user has installed - 3 or 133 it still performs great.

Pro

Popular

As of March 2015, Chrome is the most popular browser on the internet, with a 43.9% - 63.7% market share, meaning most developers will be testing their sites against this browser to ensure compatibility.

Pro

Uses Blink

It uses the blink rendering engine which has removed many legacy khtml/webkit code to be much lighter and faster.

Pro

Multimedia Plugins and Codecs included

Google Chrome comes with its own flashplayer and the most common multimedia codecs so you don't have to worry that they are outdated nor do you need to install them as a third party package.

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Cons

Con

Large bloated configuration files

To configure Grunt, developers need to basically write large files and configure JSON objects. While it's very powerful, the sheer complexity of it's configuration file may be a large obstacle for newcomers and developers that have not used any automation tools before. This may push them to search for simpler alternatives.

Con

The need to track creation/movement of files

Debugging and augmenting grunt pipelines are much harder than other build systems that clearly show the pipelines in the code.

Grunt works on files so you must track where each task puts files and try and intercept that in a task if you want to add something in the middle of a build pipeline.

Con

Grunt compatibility issues

Changes in different versions in grunt are not always backwards-compatible.

Con

Huge memory hog

Each tab and extension in the browser uses significant chunks of RAM, giving the browser poor performance on machines without enough RAM to supply.

Con

Online tracking by default

Chrome allows opting out of tracking by going to Settings > Advanced > Privacy and un-checking any unwanted services. Alternatively Chromium can be used to get a similar browser experience without Google's services on top of it.

Con

Bad for battery life

Drains battery life on both Windows laptops and Macs much quicker than the alternatives. It can shave hours off the battery life of any non Chromebook laptop.

Con

Increasingly slow

When Chrome first came out, it was known for being lightweight and very speedy. Over the years, more and more features have been added to Chrome. Because of this, crashes, errors, and general laggy-ness has increased noticeably.

Con

Proprietary

Google Chrome is proprietary software, meaning that it is not open source.

Con

No mobile extensions

Chrome on Android and iOS does not support extensions.

Con

Blurred fonts on Windows

Fonts on Windows are blurred, that is especially noticeable in light fonts on dark background. Small italic text is hard to read.

Con

Hard/impossible to transfer passwords to a different machine without uploading them to Google

Con

Does not hardware accelerate HTML5 video correctly

Chrome is unable to hardware accelerate HTML5 video correctly which makes playing 4k video on laptops a poor experience filled with lag.

Though there is a workaround for YouTube in that a plugin can be installed to force Flash playback instead of HTML5, which plays smoothly and has no HW acceleration issues. There's another plugin (h264ify) that will force to use the h.264 codec video if available instead of the VP9 one which is the resource hog.

Con

Basic

Unlike Opera and Vivaldi which are more stable and has more features, Chrome is pretty basic.

Con

Big target for hackers

Chrome is the most popular browser in the world. That makes it the most targeted browser in the world by hackers.

Con

Bad quality control on extensions

Some just plain don't work while a few actually break the browser.

Con

No menu bar (except on Mac)

There's no no menu bar, except on Mac OS.

Con

Gives too much weight to Google on the future of the Web

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